China? Have Grandmaster, Will Travel
By Pepe Escobar
June 13, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Asia
Times" -
As intellectual acumen and cross-cultural expertise
go, it would be hopeless to expect self-described “Don’t Do Stupid
Stuff” Obama administration foreign policy advisers — as well as
Pentagon functionaries/hacks — to understand the complexities of
China.
For instance, they would be incapable of
evaluating all the myriad ramifications included in Professor Alfred
McCoy’s masterful
deconstruction of US-China geopolitics.
Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha is
currently visiting Singapore, where he is discussing with his
counterpart Lee Hsien Loong the intricacies of ASEAN-China
concerning the formidably complex South China Sea disputes.
Thailand fully supports Singapore — ASEAN’s number
one investor — to succeed Bangkok in the rotating role of
ASEAN-China coordinator. Contrary to alarmist/paranoid scenarios
paraded in the Beltway, the South China Sea disputes will be
resolved diplomatically, within the ASEAN-China framework.
Lee Hsien Loong happens to be the elder son of
late Singapore founding father, Prime Minister and Minister Mentor,
the larger-than-life Lee Kuan Yew. He learned everything there is to
know about Asia — and China — from Dad, first-hand.
When I moved to live in Asia in 1994, out of
Paris, my first port of call was Singapore. That was at the height
of the Asian miracle. Full immersion meant learning everything that
revolved around Lee — and from Lee himself. Ideology, and political
gaps aside — for instance, he was not exactly his usual razor-sharp
about Iran or Russia or Latin America – Lee arguably knew more about
China than any outside observer/analyst.
After all, it was Lee who dazzled the Little
Helmsman Deng Xiaoping in person, in the late 1970s, prompting Deng
to launch a modern China conceived as a sort of “a thousand
Singapores”; sterling economic success under tight political
control. President Xi Jinping, crucially, admires Lee as “our senior
who has our respect.”
As Lee tells it, when he was asked by Chinese
think tanks about “peaceful rise” as the new Chinese mantra, he
responded with “peaceful renaissance, or evolution, or development.
A recovery of ancient glory, an updating of a once great
civilization.” Not accidentally, “peaceful development” was adopted
by the previous Beijing leadership.
Now that the non-stop hysterical meme across the
West is the “China threat,” or, extrapolating from the South China
Sea disputes, “China aggression,” it’s quite enlightening to come
back to the Grandmaster for some sobering China-related hard facts.
Call it the Grandmaster’s concise China, and concise China-US, most
of it compiled at Lee Kuan Yew (MIT Press, 2013). No
meaningful analysis of China is possible without it.
Make no mistake; in geopolitics, Lee was pure
status quo. He believed “no alternative balance can be as
comfortable as the present one, with the US as a major player …The
geopolitical balance without the U.S. as a principal force will be
very different from that which it now is or can be if the U.S.
remains a central player.”
Well, things are not so “comfortable” anymore.
The Grandmaster speaks
On China as number 1: “Theirs is a culture 4,000
years old with 1.3 billion people, many of great talent — a huge and
very talented pool to draw from. How could they not aspire to be
number 1 in Asia, and in time the world?”
On what the Chinese people want: “Every Chinese
wants a strong and rich China, a nation as prosperous, advanced, and
technologically competent as America, Europe, and Japan. The
reawakened sense of destiny is an overpowering force.”
On the master scenario: “The Chinese have
calculated that they need 30 to 40, maybe 50, years of peace and
quiet to catch up, build up their system, change it from the
communist system to the market system. They must avoid the mistakes
made by Germany and Japan … I believe the Chinese leadership has
learnt that if you compete with America in armaments, you will lose.
You will bankrupt yourself. So, avoid it, keep your head down, and
smile, for 40 or 50 years.” (Not anymore; Xi is turning Deng’s “keep
a low profile” upside down.)
On what China needs from the US: “China knows that
it needs access to US markets, US technology, opportunities for
Chinese students to study in the U.S. and bring back to China new
ideas about new frontiers. It therefore sees no profit in
confronting the U.S. in the next 20 to 30 years in a way that could
jeopardize these benefits.” (And as Michael Hudson has noted,
China’s new economic push is all about its thriving internal market;
“China doesn’t need more dollars. Indeed, the more dollars it gets,
the only thing it can safely do with them is lend them to the US
Treasury, funding the military’s “Asia Pivot” to encircle China.”)
On Southeast Asia: “China’s strategy for Southeast
Asia is fairly simple: China tells the region, ‘come grow with me.’
At the same time, China’s leaders want to convey the impression that
China’s rise is inevitable and that countries will need to decide if
they want to be China’s friend or foe when it ‘arrives.’ China is
also willing to calibrate its engagement to get what it wants or
express its displeasure.”
On why the U.S. “lost” Southeast Asia: “China is
sucking the Southeast Asian countries into its economic system
because of its vast market and growing purchasing power. Japan and
South Korea will inevitably be sucked in as well. It just absorbs
countries without having to use force. China’s neighbors want the
U.S. to stay engaged in the Asia-Pacific so that they are not
hostages to China. The US should have established a free-trade area
with Southeast Asia 30 years ago, well before the Chinese magnet
began to pull the region into its orbit. If it had done so, its
purchasing power would now be so much greater than it is, and all of
the Southeast Asian countries would have been linked to the U.S.
economy rather than depending on China’s. Economics sets underlying
trends.”
On Asian trade: “What are the Americans going to
fight China over? Control over East Asia? The Chinese need not fight
over East Asia. Slowly and gradually, they will expand their
economic ties with East Asia and offer them their market of 1.3
billion consumers … Extrapolate that another 10, 20 years and they
will be the top importer and exporter of all East Asian countries.
How can the Americans compete in trade?” (that explains the Obama
administration’s desperation to push for a China-excluding TPP.)
On China going asymmetrical: “Economically and
militarily, they may not catch up for 100 years in technology, but
asymmetrically, they can inflict enormous damage on the Americans.”
On the Party’s fear of chaos: “To achieve the
modernization of China, her communist leaders are prepared to try
all and every method, except for democracy with one person and one
vote in a multi-party system. Their two main reasons are their
belief that the Communist Party of China must have a monopoly on
power to ensure stability; and their deep fear of instability in a
multi-party free-for-all, which would lead to a loss of control by
the center over the provinces, with horrendous consequences, like
the warlord years of the 1920s and ‘30s.”
On why culture rules: “Can the Chinese break free
from their own culture? It will require going against the grain of
5,000 years of Chinese history. When the center is strong, the
country prospers. When the center is weak, the emperor is far away,
the mountains are high, and there are many little emperors in the
provinces and counties. This is their cultural heritage …Chinese
traditions thus produce a more uniform mandarinate.”
On the inevitability of being back to number 1:
“They operate on the basis of consensus and have a long view. While
some may imagine that the 21st century will belong to
China, others expect to share this century with the U.S. as they
build up to China’s century to follow.”
On why it’s so hard for the US to accept it: “For
America to be displaced, not in the world, but only in the Western
Pacific, by an Asian people long despised and dismissed with
contempt as decadent, feeble, corrupt, and inept is emotionally very
difficult to accept. The sense of cultural supremacy of the
Americans will make this adjustment most difficult. Americans
believe their ideas are universal — the supremacy of the individual
and free, unfettered expression. But they are not — never were. In
fact, American society was so successful for so long not because of
these ideas and principles, but because of a certain geopolitical
good fortune, an abundance of resources and immigration energy, a
generous flow of capital and technology from Europe, and two wide
oceans that kept conflicts of the world away from American shores.
Americans have to eventually share their preeminent position with
China.”
Now live with it: “The US cannot stop China’s
rise. It just has to live with a bigger China, which will be
completely novel for the US, as no country has ever been big enough
to challenge its position. China will be able to do so in 20 to 30
years.” (Lee said that at the FutureChina Global Forum in Singapore,
in 2011. Under Xi, China is already challenging the U.S.’s
position.)